luvTooQuilt... so glad you opened this thread...I'm a button-lover... and have the same stories as many of you here about playing with Grandmother's and Momma's buttons as a child... and yes, I still have the metal box of Momma's. But I used many of them recently to quilt a D9P made for my DSIL. I SID on the outside of the blocks, but placed a button in the middle of the large patch of each one. It turned out very cute and she and her DH love the quilt. I'm thrilled to see so many new ideas for buttons here... I've bookmarked all of them!!
Oh I just remembered a tiny button book I gave to Momma and now have... be right back...
It has all kinds of interesting tid-bits about buttons: We use the term "cops" for police because in 1844 NY Mayor James Harper put big copper buttons on the uniforms... They called them "coppers" and we've shortened it..
"Dough boys" originated during the Civil War when certain regiments wore large globular brass buttons that someone thought looked like a boiled dumpling. (He must have been hungry at the time?)
Martha Stewart: "Buttons are the fossils of the sartorial world, enduring long past the garments they were designed to hold together."
"You can have the shirt off my back--but you can't have the buttons." Nancy Bartholomew Fink 20th Century button collector and president of the National Button Society
Great stuff!! Thanks for inviting us to talk about buttons!!